SynMax Research:
More Aggressive Haynesville Private Producers
APEX Natural Gas LLC, formerly known as Paloma Natural Gas LLC, has acreage, rigs, and frac crews in Haynesville Louisiana as shown on Hyperion’s Geo.
APEX has been very aggressive on frac crews and rigs, even surpassing Expand Energy and Comstock Resources.
APEX is also equaling Comstock Resources on frac crews.
This suggests that APEX is looking to aggressively expand production and build DUCs as APEX has built more rigs and frac crews in 2025. Additionally, APEX has more rigs than Expand Energy and the same amount of frac crews as Comstock Resources while at the same time APEX’s most recent public natural gas production data (0.35 Bcf/d by year-end 2024) is much lower than that of Comstock Resources (~1.4 Bcf/d) and Expand Energy (~3.1 Bcf/d) in Haynesville.
The example of APEX shows that private producers are now being more aggressive than public producers, especially in Haynesville, where private producers are the great majority of production in the basin.
APEX’s frac crews and rigs have gone up tremendously since the beginning of 2025. Additionally, private producer frac crew counts in Haynesville are now up 75% from a year ago while public producer frac crew counts are flat year-on-year (YOY).
This has significant implications as it indicates that Haynesville production growth in 2026 will likely be substantially greater than what the public producer guidance suggests with Expand Energy at around 4.5%. Nearly 70% of production in Haynesville comes from private producers. Hyperion’s long-term production forecast is factoring in the much more aggressive activity from private producers in Haynesville in 2026 with an expected production increase of 8.6% YOY. Over the last few years, the YOY private producer to public producer fracking ratio has been a significant improvement to the public producer guidance driven long-term production forecast since it more accurately accounts for private producers. Private producers still account for ~50% of all Lower 48 natural gas production.
Summary
Haynesville private producers, such as APEX, are now much more aggressive in their activity levels compared to public producers. YOY total Haynesville private producer frac crew activity is 75% higher than public frac crew activity. This means it is very likely that YOY Haynesville production growth will be substantially greater than what public producers such as Expand Energy are indicating in 2026.
Golden Pass Cool Down Cargo Update
The LNG carrier IMSAIKAH (IMO 9977256), which loaded 3.3 Bcf at Ras Laffan, Qatar on October 29, 2025, is currently transiting the Gulf with an estimated arrival at Golden Pass LNG late this week.
Golden Pass Commissioning Progress
Golden Pass has been receiving feed gas for commissioning activities since late July 2025, with flows progressively ramping from initial test volumes of 4,000 MMBtu/d in July to approximately 8,700 MMBtu/d by mid-October 2025. Feed gas flows have remained steady at approximately 8,784 MMBtu/d throughout November and into early December 2025, indicating sustained pre-startup commissioning work. These volumes represent approximately 1% of Train 1's full operational capacity of 0.87 Bcf/d (870,000 MMBtu/d).
The arrival of IMSAIKAH's cooldown cargo in early December aligns with the expected cooldown phase for Train 1, potentially enabling first liquefaction operations in Q1 2026. Pipeline flow data continues to be monitored through SynMax Hyperion's proprietary scraping model.
SynMax Vulcan will continue tracking construction progress on Trains 2 and 3 through satellite imagery analysis. Vulcan clients interested in thermal imagery analysis of Golden Pass LNG commissioning activities may contact SynMax Research for custom reporting.